Concrete Theatre

The oldest theater in Skagit County, built in 1923 in the small town of Concrete along the North Cascades Highway.

The Concrete Theatre has survived fire, financial ruin, and a century of hard living in a town that once had more brothels than churches. The current building is actually the third Concrete Theatre. The first was destroyed by a fire of unknown origin on September 14, 1916, while manager C.D. Stickney was showing the fifth chapter installments of three Pathe serials: The Iron Claw starring Pearl White, The Red Circle with Ruth Roland, and Neal of the Navy. Stickney reported it as a total loss, with all films incinerated. He rebuilt, but that second theater also burned to the ground. Undeterred, Stickney constructed a third theater across the street from the original location, opening in June 1924. It has stood ever since, making it the oldest theater in Skagit County.

The town of Concrete itself was born from industry and violence. Two rival cement companies -- the Washington Portland Cement Company, founded in 1905, and the Superior Portland Cement Company, established in 1908 -- drew hundreds of miners, loggers, mill hands, and cement workers to a lawless village in the North Cascades foothills. The two settlements of Baker and Cement City merged and incorporated as Concrete on May 8, 1909. After wooden buildings kept burning down, the town rebuilt its commercial district entirely in concrete in 1921. The cement industry flourished until 1969, when excessive dust emissions forced the plants to close. The massive ruins of the Washington Portland Cement Company, known today as Devil's Tower, still loom over the east bank of Lake Shannon, drawing ghost hunters and thrill seekers to the condemned site where unexplained sounds and sightings have been reported for decades.

The theater's most famous brush with the paranormal came on October 30, 1938, when Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre broadcast The War of the Worlds as a simulated live newscast describing a Martian invasion. At the exact moment Welles announced the aliens' landing and a resulting power blackout, a short circuit at the Superior Portland Cement Company's substation plunged Concrete into actual darkness. With phone lines also dead, the town's roughly 1,500 residents had no way to confirm the broadcast was fiction. Panic spread as men fled into the surrounding hills -- many, according to local accounts, to protect their illegal moonshine stills. The incident landed Concrete on the front page of the New York Times, reportedly the only time the town has been mentioned there. The Concrete Theatre now screens a black-and-white War of the Worlds film adaptation every year as a tribute to the night the town believed Martians had landed.

The paranormal activity inside the theater itself centers on its small balcony. Current owner Valerie Stafford, who purchased the theater with her husband Fred West in September 2009 and reopened it on February 12, 2010, has reported repeated encounters while working alone in the building. She describes things brushing against her arm and the distinct sensation of someone standing beside her while seated in the balcony, though no one is there. On multiple occasions, both Stafford and others have spotted a man standing inside the small balcony area, only to find it empty moments later. Audience members have reported vibrating seats with no mechanical explanation and observed unexplained orb-like phenomena during screenings. During the annual Concrete Ghost Walk, which begins inside the theater, participants have experienced malfunctioning watches and phones, flickering streetlights along the route, and unexplained shadows in the building. One year, a black cat followed the entire tour group through town.

Stafford, who grew up in Concrete, was inspired to create the ghost walk after attending similar events in Atlanta, Georgia, and Port Townsend, Washington. When she went door-to-door along Main Street asking business owners if they thought their buildings were haunted, she was stunned by how many had stories. Nearly every owner responded with personal accounts of paranormal encounters. The ghost walk, which celebrated its 20th season in October 2025 with approximately 35 volunteer actors performing at 11 stops along Main Street, has become the town's signature cultural event. Of her own theater's spirits, Stafford has said: "If there's anybody haunting, it's got to be them" -- referring to C.D. Stickney and the original owners who built and rebuilt the theater through fire after fire.

The theater was added to the Washington State Historical Registry on June 5, 1987, and received digital projection equipment in 2012. It also served as a backdrop for the 1992 filming of This Boy's Life, when Warner Brothers transformed Concrete's Main Street to its 1950s appearance for the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. Today, the 180-seat theater continues to host second-run films, live performances, and the annual ghost walk, serving as the heart of a town that wears its haunted reputation proudly.